


Three Blocks of Tonal Disbelief

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2010, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:36:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean breathes in, the tip flares red and warms his fingers. The smoke has a chemical taste that coats the walls of his mouth; he lets it trail down his throat slowly, imagines it stretching like a rope straight to his lungs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Blocks of Tonal Disbelief

**Author's Note:**

> A/n: Non-linear timeline. Written for roque_clasique on the occasion of her birthday and based on her prompt, which, as usual, I followed loosely.   
> Thanks to essenceofmeanin for hand-holding and beta reading. Mistakes are all mine. Title from 'Quartz Hearts' by Clark Coolidge. Sections breaks from 'Smoking' by Elton Glaser.

**Three Blocks of Tonal Disbelief**

Boldface of fire, the rage and sway of it, raw blue at the base  
And a slope of gold, a touch to the packed tobacco, the tip

 

It's the stairs that do him. Dean was doing all right until the fucking stairs. He stops on the land between two ramps, shotgun propped on the next step like a cane. He looks upward. He's between the fourth and fifth floor, has four point five left to climb for the top. There are no railings he can lean against unless he counts the wooden planks nailed together on the external side where the walls should be.

At least it's stopped raining; at least, he isn't shivering anymore. He'd forgot to turn on the boiler the night before and the water was fucking freezing when he'd taken his shower; no amount of rubbing his skin dry with a starch towel had warmed him up. He blinks sweat out of his eyes, wipes his face with the hem of his shirt. He can't take deep breaths anymore; every time he tries, his chest seizes painfully, lungs constricting like someone hit him with a two-by-four. He tries shallows breaths, but it's not enough, lungs still starved and wheezing and heart beating so fast he's expecting it to hop right out of his throat.

John's below, covering his progress, shotgun in hand. Dean knows him well enough to be sure he's sent him up on purpose, and he figures, he fucking deserves it.

"Hurry up, Dean," he shouts. "We don't have all day." John's voice sounds even deeper up here, amplified in the empty building and trapped inside the bare walls. Dean straightens and keeps going.

By the time he's reached the roof, his vision is hazy and pulses in red, bright blotches. He's getting only a trickle of air past his throat and it's stale and humid and stinks of wet cement. Sweat pours out of his skin when he stops to rest; it trickles on the sides of his face and down his chin and for a moment he wonders if it's raining again. He closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing, on the familiar slope of his shotgun against his palm. He's supposed to-- he can't remember. Something about checking the land from above, something about finding a pattern, but he can't focus on the details over the roaring noise of his heartbeat.

The world spins slowly when he opens his eyes; he blinks and it tilts sideways before it settles. He looks around. The edge of the roof has no safety walls yet, only empty space beyond the crosses of beams and girds and the steel underpinnings that point skyward. All around, flat land of greens and browns. When Dean's heart slows down, he straightens, remembers he should check in with John. He tries, but his voice comes out strangled and feeble and he kicks the ground, hand pressed against his chest because, fuck, it hurts.

*

The hinge of the door makes a whiny, drawn-out noise when Dean closes it. He stands there, palm flat over the wood. He doesn't breathe until he's sure the room's as silent as he's left it. When he turns, the parking lot welcomes him with its bare bulb-lights that cast yellow shadows between the few parked cars. His eyes find the Impala, as usual, find her gleaming in the dull light. The motel's asleep for the night, only a square of feeble glow from behind the clerk's office window. The rest is gray and foggy, the smell of wet earth polluted by car exhaust and gasoline. A truck whizzes by on the highway and Dean imagines the rush of air moving the rising fog, pushing it his way.

He shivers when he hears the staccato noise of boots clicking on asphalt, spins around, heartbeat picking rhythm again when he sees the girl sitting on the concrete steps that leads to the motel pool. She slouches with a sort of abandon that's better reserved to stuffed armchairs. Dean's seen her before, earlier that morning while he and John were getting out and the strap of Dean's duffle cut a straight line across his shoulder and his chest with its heavy load of guns and tools. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd seen her and he'd stared, stupidly fascinated by the red of her sweater, got distracted from the tense line of John's back and his purposeful strides. He hadn't even seen her face, only a flicker of black hair. She's a smudge of bright red in the grayness of the parking lot._ Not like the spilled blood of a pixie, clotted with pale shards of white bones under the blast of his sawed off_. She stands up with her cute sweater over her blue jeans in the amorphous evenness of the roadside motel.

Dean wasn't looking for company, but he walks there, sits on the same step, not too far from where she is, and way more carefully. His ribs protest anyway, grating against each other and cutting his breath short in a swallowed gasp. From his position he can see the door of the room John and Sam are sleeping in, the drawn out curtains behind the window and the front bumper of the Impala. _ The towels are bloody and smell sour even through the plastic bag he's sealed shut with tape._ When he looks back at her, she smiles like she's won something and Dean finds a smile too, though he feels it stretching too thin over his lips. She's probably Dean's own age, seventeen maybe younger, hard to say under that light, under heavy make-up and red, red lips that make her look older. It's all right. Dean feels older, too. She's not what he'd consider pretty: nose too large and lips too thin, a large forehead and a pointed chin that reminds Dean of a Fae, but her smile is dimpled like Sam's.

She keeps silent, slouches and stretches her legs over two steps and takes a pack of smokes from the front pocket of her jeans. She taps one free with her forefinger. Her nails are short and blunt, uneven and lined with dirt. The noise she makes when she lights the cigarette is a long satisfied sigh. Smoke curls around her head; a gray halo that spirals upward, dirtied by the yellow lights. Dean shifts, lets his leg bumps into hers and when she offers him her cigarette he nods, takes it between fingers kept rigid to mask the trembling. The point of contact between their legs is the only part of him that's warm, the rest of him gelid and frozen and still scared.

Finally, she says, "Looks like you need it." Then she asks, "What are you doing outside this late?" Her tone is not exactly annoyed, more lazy – indifferent – and it irks him.

Dean doesn't answer, asks a question of his own, "You passing, through?"

She shakes her head, "I live here," she says, points to a door somewhere on the far end of the motel building, where the darkness swallows the pale light coming from the parking lot.

"It's dangerous being out this time of the night," he says, didn't meant to. _The pixie shrieks a long pitching noise that hurts his ears. Its claws are long, talon-like and iridescent when the torch bounces off them._

She scuffles her boots, draws two longs furrows into the dirt with her heels. She tips her chin high, gaze in the direction of her cabin. "Company's better out here," she says.

Dean nods, puts the filter between his lips. It's warm, sticky with her lip-gloss and humid with her saliva. When Dean breathes in, the tip flares red and warms his fingers. The smoke has a chemical taste that coats the walls of his mouth; he lets it trail down his throat slowly, imagines it stretching like a rope straight to his lungs. He waits for _something_ to happen but it's only smoke that burns a path outside his nose, scented under the chemicals with something that reminds Dean of a forest fire. He puts more force behind the next drag, the tips flaring like a small furnace of bright red flames and there it is, a dizziness that inflates his head and makes his eyes cross. He holds the smoke inside his lungs, then lets it rush out fast, drags another lungful immediately after with such a force the tips crackles and sprinkles red ash onto his legs. He swallows it wrong, feels the first seize of lungs cramping up his muscles and tries to stifle it, but it's no use. Smoke pours out with a cough from his nose and mouth, with it a shame that burns on his face worse than the pain on his ribs. Something snaps under the force of his coughing, a sickening sound that forces him to stand; breathless and red-faced, he vomits with closed eyes the empty content of his stomach.

His legs give away and, fuck it, but he's not falling in front of a girl. It takes effort but he locks his knees and finds the rail, curls a hand around flaking paint. It's enough to keep him upright until the fit fades away into dry sobs. It hurts. _More than the impact with the tree and less than John's gasp of pain, less than the sound of ripped clothes and ripped flesh._ He open his eyes on her dusty boots and the weight of her hand on his back. He shakes it off with a bare movement of his shoulder, but she gets it, moves away fast, arm falling heavy at her side.

"It's all right," Dean says, and then he frowns: that shredded voice can't belong to him. He straightens from his bent position, keeps a hand pressed where the worst of the pain his, on his left side, right under his heart, the other locked tight around the railing.

"I'm sorry," she says. Dean knows she's apologizing for things she doesn't understand, and pitying him for assumptions he's too tired to correct.

"'S all right," he says again, seems he can't muster any other word, but she nods, sighs and then she smiles like she's finally figured something out. Her hands are tiny and light over his chest. It takes Dean a moment to understand what she's doing, and when he does, she's already patting the front pocket of his shirt where she's put her pack of cigs.

"Take them," she says, then twirls around and she's gone before Dean can think of something else to say. Not that it matters, but he hasn't even asked her name. He looks at the ground; the cigarette he was smoking's still lit, and he quashes it under his boot until it's nothing recognizable, only a smear of white and brown and black flattened against the asphalt.

He goes back to his room slowly, hands on the walls for support. For some reason, the door doesn't creak when he opens it and the room's silent with Sam's even breaths and John's heavy ones. He checks the bandages across John's chest, finds only a tiny spot of blood where the worst of the wound is. John's skin is warm against the back of his hand, but not hot, his hands are loose at his side, turned upwards, fingers limp. On the nightstand, the claw Dean dug from John's chest is still bloody and Dean puts a hand over his mouth to staunch the nausea, goes to the bathroom and heaves again above the toilet, trying not to breathe the sour smell of blood and old urine that drenches the air. _ He should have been faster._

Some time passes, a jump from then to now Dean spends sitting on the only chair in the room listening to the white noise of the night, or maybe he dreams, caught in that weird state between wakefulness and sleep that doesn't let his brain rest. When the sky clears a bruised light behind the window, he stands, achy and cold, goes to the window, moves the curtain aside to peer outside. He stills when Sam moves, sleep bothered by the light, but he doesn't wake up and Dean's glad; he isn't ready yet to face the fear in Sam's eyes.

The parking lot is still as empty as the night before, the same cars scattered around, the lights are turned off, though, in their place the paleness of dawn. He lets the curtain fall back into place with a heavy breath of dust. He turns toward the semi-darkness of the room, takes the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, he counts six, enough space left that the pixie's claw fits sideways. He puts the pack at the bottom of his duffle, hidden inside a clean shirt.

-*-

Turned red as a warning light, blown brighter by the breath,  
The pull and the pump of it, and the paper's white

 

There's no wind up on the roof, only oppressive cold air. He walks toward the edge, kneels and peers over it, an arm hooked fast around an exposed beam and chilly from the cement where it presses against his chest. The truck is where John's parked it, black glinting like a beetle from above, headlights turned off, the shovel leaning against the bumper. The building creates no shadows across the ground, and it's a minor miracle because Dean can see it now, a faint circle, like a birthmark across the land, the line broken with weeds and stones. It disappears under the tons of steel and bricks of the parking building cut this time irreparably and setting free whatever it was supposed to keep trapped inside.

Dean's still staring at it when John comes out of the building, steps deliberate to avoid the treacherous terrain. He looks up, face rounded and pale and marred with beard; expectant. Dean puts the shotgun on the ground, waves his free arm, thumb up.

John doesn't move for a long moment, head still thrown upward watching Dean. And it's impossible, not from across the ten floors between them, but he feels the intensity of his gaze and squirms under it. Finally John shouts, "Come down," takes the shovel and starts digging. Dean keeps watching until the first layers of muddy, soft soil becomes a pile around him, then he turns, sits on the floor, shotgun across his thighs heavy and cocked – only a moment to catch his breath.

He feels it coming, change of pressure and cold air that puffs frigid from his mouth, then the wavering shape of a man close to the stairwell, translucent and gray in its tattered clothes. It moves in fits and starts, head cocked to one side in a way that makes it look puzzled. When it's close enough, Dean aims and shreds it into pieces. He stands, reloads and he's ready when it appears at his left. A small rotation of his body before he presses the trigger. The recoil throws him back against the beam and dangerously close to the edge and a ten-floors jump. He adjusts his stance so that his body's weight is evenly spread on both legs, stumbles forward when the ghost materializes at his back, a block of ice. He tries to turn but there's already a trickle of pain in his chest. He chokes on a cry when it wrenches the shotgun from his hand, writs twisted and bones snapping under the force of it. The shotgun flies over the edge.

Dean doesn't hear it hitting the ground.

*

Dean crosses through the front door ten minutes after the last call of the bell. He's not the only one: a couple of kids rush past him, face damp with sweat. They disappear behind the corner at the end of the corridor to whatever class they're headed to. He wonders if they're Sam's classmates. _What the fuck, Dean? I'm sixteen, don't need you baby-sitting me._ Others, older and jaded, younger still than Dean, walk indolent and ignore the scathing looks a janitor who's lazily drinking from a tall cup of coffee throw their way.

Dean feels detached, like he's more an observer than a student, here only because John's away on a hunt and he's keeping a close eye on Sam. He doesn't have his books and he's not sure where he's supposed to go. He follows the corridor and goes upstairs on the first floor, remembers something about an English class only because the teacher had given them The Laughing Man to read and he'd enjoyed it, devoured, even, as he waited for Sam to be done with his practice. It's soccer, again. Extra points for Sam's curriculum but Dean doesn't know what he needs it for.

He finds the right door and slips inside. Faces turn toward him, eyes rounded and scandalized on some of the girls, under it a veneer of interest they can't quite mask. He walks to an empty seat, but the teacher stands from his desk and shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester," he says, forefinger tapping on his watch and with a voice that tells he's not sorry at all. Dean freezes, feeling caught. He catches the muffled snickers coming from a couple of the guys and straightens up, back held straight, air of indifference that's as easy as breathing and matches the one on the teacher's face. Dean's met a lot of teachers in a lot of schools all over the mid-west and the two coast lines. Some make an effort that last at most a couple of days and Mr. Rhodes isn't one of them. He didn't even try, maybe sensing the uselessness of it. Dean can't fault him for it, but there's a pang of disappointment that he stifles humming a song under his breath. _What's your problem, dude. Ever thought I want to finish school?_

Back in the corridor, he's faced with a choice: there's no way he's going out of here until the first period rolls by and he isn't staying in the corridor. He stares at the green line on the wall, straight and even and ugly, the same government shade of ugly puke-green in every fucking school he's ever been in. He just hopes this is the last he sees.

He walks to the restroom, listens to the faded voices come from behind closed doors, to the noise of his steel-reinforced boots bouncing off the walls and the metallic lockers. The air in the restroom is stale with smoke and smelly with urine under the industrial bleach liberally doused onto the floor. The water, when he opens the faucet, makes the pipes groan and comes out the color of rust. He lets it flow until it clears, then cups his hands and splashes the flush off his face. The water still tastes weird on his tongue. He wipes it with a paper towel, bends to adjust the knife in his boot where it's irritating the skin on his ankle. The wall behind the sink is covered in messages, crude and gross, written in the thick lines of sharpies. He sits on the floor, back against the wall, and reads them all: love messages and invites to fuck, complete with phone numbers still readable under angry strike-throughs. He reads declarations of sexual skills he's not sure are even possible, insults to queers complete with stick-figures of limbs twined into odd positions. Sandy's pussy, whoever Sandy is, is very popular and gets messages of adoration and a crude poem that spans the entire length of the pipes under the sink.

There's water on the floor and a thick layer of dirt in corners that haven't seen a mop in years, there are flattened butts, some white, some brown, some long and thin. Half-smoked ones thrown away with urgency, a couple of cigarettes are still whole. Dean nudges one closer with the tip of his boot. It's dirty, slightly damp but not wet and he rolls it between his fingers to straighten it up.

The restroom's empty but Dean knows it won't last long, so he stands, ass damp and numb, checks his pockets for his Zippo and the lock-pick tools, his watch for the time. Janitors are supposed to be out in the corridor mopping the floor after the crowd of students disappears behind their classrooms, but Dean knows they take their sweet time at the coffee machine, and besides, nobody's going to bother him much in this school. He walks leisurely toward the staircase, hops on the steps two at time up to the third floor and past the fourth where the stairs end abruptly on a steel door closed with a childproof lock. Dean's out on the roof in thirty seconds and not a drop of sweat.

The vista from the roof is surprising. Between two higher building it's unobstructed and open over the town and pretty enough that Dean has to stare. The tops of the houses laid out at his feet five floors below are colorful. The sea is visible from here past the twisted roads and blue like the sky, its line marred by the high cranes of the shipyards that employ more than half the people in town. If Dean closes his eyes he can smell the salt carried by the wind, faster and colder up here, the shrieks of the gulls as they steal fish from the boats he's seen getting back to the docks heavy with their load. _You've got your job at the docks, Sam says, sullen and self-righteous. Why can't you stay out of my life for six hours? You don't even like school._

He finds two chairs in a corner, close to the edge, the wood scarred and covered in more graffiti, a carpet of litter all around them: beer bottles and soda cans, candy wrappers and dirty paper towels. He sits, boots perched on the low wall that marks the edge of the roof, huddles deeper inside his winter coat against the chill of the wind. His Zippo snaps open with a metallic click that freezes his teeth, the tip of the cigarette burns red and he inhales the smoke. The workers at the docks give him cigarettes they roll single-handedly with a surprising finesse, and the tobacco smells fresh when he puffs it out, fragrant and humid. Dean has tried rolling too, but his own are floppy, and the older worker laugh and pat his shoulder with their huge, calloused hands and end rerolling them good-naturedly enough Dean doesn't feel offended. He can shoot and hit a moving target better than anyone else, after all.

Sometimes on their walk to the bus stop, Paul, a Tunisian who spends his shift perched on the forklift above everyone else, hands Dean dark _Gauloises _ with no filter and they burn all the way to Dean's lung when he smokes them and make his head spin and his heat run fast. Paul speaks only two words in English, fuck you and thanks, but rambles on in his tongue with an accent that makes Dean think of the deserts in Paul's country, the sweet swell of the rolling dunes of sand. Dean wonders, sometimes, if the blue of the sea is different in the Mediterranean when it laps lazy and intense against the yellow earth.

The ring of the bell comes muffled from below, past the steel of the doors and the cement of the walls. There's a sensation of movement in the loud noise of voices and shouts, the building coming alive with a released breath of hundreds feet stomping onto the floor. _Don't worry, squirt, Dean says. You won't even see me._ Among them Sam's, his winter boots already too short and tight now that he's growing into his long bones.

His cigarette's already burning up to the double brown line on the filter, but he tries another drag, then he flicks the butt behind his back. He'd light another if he had one, but he doesn't and he only has ten minutes to get out of the school building without calling attention to himself. He checks his watch. Second shift down at the docks will be starting in half an hour. If he runs he can be there on time for the pick- up, get paid cash at the end of his shift and be back when Sam's done with his soccer practice. They could run down to the grocery store on their way home. He makes a mental list: chocolate milk and canned beans, pre-cooked sauce and Fruit Loops. They're running out of toilet paper and toothpaste. Dean will throw some mouthwash in the cart to keep away the sour smell of smoke from his breath.

-*-

Smoothed now to ash as the smoke draws back, drawn down  
To the black crust of lungs, tar and poisons in the pink

 

Dazed, Dean looks down at his chest. A hand emerges incongruously between the ribs, with its long, thin fingers and black nails curved into claws. The arm moves things inside Dean's chest he's sure should be left the hell alone. It hurts so much he doesn't notice the other hand hooking in the soft tissue under his collarbone until he feels the blood run under his shirt and the hit of colder air against his skin.

Dean tries to resist, but can only follow the movement when the ghost turns him around, easily like he's no more than a piece of meat on two hooks. He's so close to the edge he can only see the cuts of fields and the sky and the emptiness of the long fall under his feet. The ghost breathes a puff of death against his ear, pushes him a few precious inches and Dean knows he'd been falling already if he wasn't caught in this twisted version of a hug. He shoves back, ignores the tearing of flesh and the tears freezing on his face. The ghost gives under his push – maybe surprised. It's an illusory victory, though, when it retaliates twisting his arm through Dean's chest. His legs buckle, knees going soft when the ghost shakes him like he's no more than a puppet. Dean whimpers, hurting on the three points of chest and shoulder and his broken wrist, like he's the one being shredded to pieces this time, inside out and outside in. He's going to fall any moment, as soon as the ghost's done playing with him. He closes his eyes. He doesn't want to see the ground coming at him and he doesn't want to see John's face before he hits the ground and he doesn't want to die.

It's pure luck when his working hand finds one of the underpinning. He clings to it as his left foot loses its grip, but the ghost keeps pushing, strength inexorable around him. His sweaty palm slowly shifts around the pole, fingers cramped and stars and dots behind his eyes he's shutting them so hard. He's sweating and in pain and desperate and then the ghost explodes in light and fire all around him and the fire singes his hair and leaves a sting of burnt flesh in his nostrils.

*

A door bangs shut downstairs. The crack is loud, annoying. It pierces through Dean's eyes and his headache and rolls in a chill down his spine. _The morning Sam leaves for the last time, he doesn't slam the door; he closes it gently so it doesn't make any noise._ It's not morning yet, but it isn't night anymore, although one could mistake the dark sky for it, so heavy with a rain that blathers an insensate rhythm against the single window. His groan when he rolls out of bed echoes loudly in the nearly empty room – a closet and two twin beds, a table and two chairs, a sink against the opposite wall and a gas stove. The room's three kinds of cold when he pads to the table: biting with the hard tiles under his bare feet, damp along his legs and the stiff material of his jeans, sharp through the shabby layer of his cotton t-shirt .

The shouting will start downstairs soon, same hour every fucking day for the last fortnight, Dean doesn't even need to check his watch to see it's six o'clock. He finds his pack of cigarettes on the table, hidden under an empty pizza-box and the notes of his hunt. Two books he's borrowed from the local library are lying open above the blueprints of an under-construction parking lot and the topographies of the land it's been built on.

On cue the guy's voice explodes, words slurred after the night bender. Dean thinks idly of going downstairs as he lights his cigarette; it's the first of the day and the last in the pack and the smoke settles heavily against his lips scalding them. _The walls of the shack they've been staying at scream the words hurled the night before. John's measured tone and his cold ultimatum and Sam's loud defiance are all painted in ugly streaks of green on the wallpaper._ The wife usually takes a while to get worked up over whatever bullshit the husband's throwing at her, but not this time. When the kid starts crying Dean wonders what kind of reaction he'd get out of the asshole if he put his Glock straight into his mouth. That would shut him up for sure.

He sits on the chair, the ashtrays is overflowing with butts and ash from the day before. It reeks so much Dean's stomach rolls painfully. It settles only when he drags smoke inside his lungs and holds it down there for a beat: a band of hard-steeled smoke around his chest. Jesus, he stinks as bad as the ashtray, smoke and old sweat and beer, and the sour taste of the three hours of sleep he's caught in his clothes. He needs coffee and he needs a shower and he needs to take a piss, but he keeps smoking until the burnt cigarette is but a cylinder of gray cinder that hobbles dangerously every time Dean takes a drag.

Distractedly, he looks at the blueprints. The building, a ten-story monster of steel and cement still in construction, is drawn like a Celtic cross with the ramps forming circles around the four limbs. Something catches his eyes in the eastward side, something in the cuts of the walls that doesn't add up for some reason. He narrows his eyes, flicks his cigarette in the direction of the ashtray, but only hits it with the underside of his palm. The ashtray tips off the table and falls on the ground with a blunt sound of hard glass and a tinkling noise of something metallic and a cloud of soft, flaking ashes.

Dean watches it settle in a large circle on the floor and on his bare feet, staining his skin and the floor gray and black and spreading the stink of ashes all around the table. The last drag of smoke left in his cigarette is too hot, but he swallows it down, disgusted and disappointed when nothing remains after. Surprisingly the ashtray isn't broken.

There's a mop in the corner that came with the rented apartment as part of the set of free cleaning supplies. It's a gray-blackish thing Dean has never used in the two weeks he's lived here. He stares at it dubiously before he stands and takes it. The handle is slimy, gross under his palms and not what's needed to clean the mess on the floor. He pushes the butts in a corner, cleans up the ash as best as he can, but the stench is now even worse and there's a circular black stain on the floor. _Sam's left no trace behind; bed perfectly made and an empty Formica desk, a dirty t-shirt in the bathroom with the Led Zeppelin logo that had been Dean's years before. _

The blueprint beacons him back with its puzzling walls and the weird cuts of them in the eastward branch, shorter and angled as if the engineers have tried to avoid something when they drew the plans. He leans over the table and spreads the large topographic above the blueprint so that they match. With a sharp pencil, he marks the contours of the branch on it. He straightens, taps the pencil against his lips as he stares. The solution must be there, in the mounds of green grass he's seen around the parking lot. Something he's read, maybe, something just out of reach, and fuck, but he can't think without nicotine.

He looks away; light pales the square of the window and washes the room gray. Annoyed at himself, Dean hurls the pencil to the table and stalks to his bed to find his boots. He wears them without socks, and it's gross when he wiggles his toes, but he only has to run downstairs and across the street so he laces them loosely and slips inside his winter coat. His hands go to the pockets automatically, the usual check for the keys and his cell. He won't need the keys but he picks the cell, presses a key to see the screen and finds it empty of missed phone calls when it blinks alive. _John leaves as efficiently as Sam. On with the program. Hunt in Minnesota. You know what to do, son. Meet me at Bobby's in two weeks. On his way out, he doesn't meet Dean's eyes._

Dean's breathing hard and dripping wet by the time he pushes the door of the grocery shop open. He nods to the boy behind the counter when he jumps awake at the jingle of the bell, asks for a carton of Marlboros and picks a candy bar from the rack beside the cash register. He's out in record time, hand already closing around his Zippo and a cigarette already hanging from his mouth. The overhang keeps the worst of the rain away. He thrusts the carton under his armpit, his hands deep in the pockets, and listens to the silence of the rain and the occasional whoosh of a car passing by. He smokes. His head spins with each drag hitting his empty stomach, hollows it out with how much he needed it; a weird sensation of freefalling. He wonders if that's how the dead workers at the site felt right before they hit the ground and all the bones in their bodies shattered in the impact.

Bones, he thinks. New and old – the ones he's looking for so he can waste the fucking ghost and be gone come Monday, before, if he can fucking figure out where they are. When he's done smoking, he sprints across the street, ignores the water that trickles past the collar of his coat and into his boots. The solution hits him as he's panting up the stairs; he whoops, suddenly energized, flings the door to his apartment open and comes to a sudden stop at the person bent over the table._Dean leaves last, reluctant, when he realizes there's nothing but empty air and empty rooms and silence and he can't cling on any of those._

It takes him a precious moment to recognize his father. Deceived by the halo of light he's bathed in, Dean had thought stupidly John was the ghost he's hunting.

"Dean," John says. He doesn't turn, but Dean hears the rustle of paper when he shuffles the maps on the table and he's suddenly aware of how messy he looks, of the stink on his clothes and the carton of cigarettes under his arms. His back snaps straight, but it's not gonna cut it.

"Sir," he says. But John still gives him his back, only this time he's looking at the room. He walks to the kitchen counter, kicks gently the trashcan under the sink and it clinks with the noise of the empty beer bottles Dean's not bothered to throw away. When he turns, his face's devoid of any expression, a bruise on his chin, under the stubble.

"How long 'till you're done here?" John asks. His eyes flicker to the carton under Dean's armpit but he doesn't say anything.

"Found the bones. I only gotta torch them up," Dean says, glances at the book on the table and hopes his hunch is right.

John looks satisfied. "Let's do it, then. Need you for another gig." John's coiled tight, arms and legs crossed as he leans against the counter, eyes never leaving Dean. "Ready to go in ten. I'll wait in my truck."

Dean nods, steps aside to let John pass through the door. On the threshold, John stops, sniffs around Dean, and then he says, "Take a shower."

-*-

Dean falls limp this side of the edge, limbs pointing in different directions. He takes a few minutes to catch his breath, fast and loud. Then he shuffles back on his ass and back until he's as far from the edge of the roof as he can. He's stupidly scared of looking down at his chest, afraid he'll find an arm-sized hole if he does, exposed lungs and the white of the bones peeking through it.

He knows at most he'll have some bruising, but the sensation of the ghost's arm shuffling on his insides is still there, real enough his brain has not caught up yet.

The noise of boots coming up the steps shakes him up and he sits on his butt, groans when he puts his right hand on the ground and the broken bones in his wrist grate against each other. After much shuffling he's sitting against an exposed pillar. He fishes inside his pocket, finds his pack and Zippo at first try; one handed, he lights a cigarette, lets the smoke soothe the trembling in his body; in and out, in and out. He's shivering, but it's just the cold now, fear dissipating like the smoke out his lips.

John comes out of the stairwell when Dean's halfway through his cigarette. John's face is shining with sweat and reddened by the cold, breaths even and, beneath his ready stance, something very scared and bright in his eyes as he scans the roof. It hits Dean more than he can process, that look; his father is never afraid.

Dean's ready to say something – a reassurance, _something_ – but it's gone by the time John sees him, and Dean's left mute. Dean crushes his cigarette on the ground, anyway.

John says nothing, kneels at his side, movements business-like and assessing Dean for hidden injuries with an efficiency born out of familiarity. Dean stifles a whimper when John moves his right hand, but there's no apology on John's face, only purpose when he turns it carefully to inspect the break. Satisfied, John puts Dean's hand back on Dean's lap, opens his coat and shirt to inspect Dean's chest. John's face says no holes, but the cold air hits wet skin so there must be blood.

When he's done, John nods to himself, sits back on his haunches. "You were lucky I torched the sonofabitch on time," he says and Dean can only nod at that self-evident truth.

John leans over Dean, then. His fingers dig in his jaw, not painfully, but firmly enough to keep Dean's head from turning. "I need to know I can depend on you as well," he says. John's eyes are unreadable and dark, intense in that way that commands Dean's own. "Can I depend on you, son?"

Dean's heart lurches in synch with the roll of his stomach, but it's horror this time, not the pain on his chest and shoulder and wrist: a vision of his father's body, bloodied and broken and lifeless. He swallows, nods.

"We're good, then," John says. His hold on Dean's jaw loosens, morphs into a delicate slap against his cheek, tender like a caress.

\--


End file.
